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Thursday, June 5, 2014

PROPAGANDA REVIEW: “My Twisted World” by Elliot Rodger

It’s easily the best manifesto written by a homicidal, World of Warcraft-obsessed misogynist you’ll read in 2014!

“Why do things have to be this way? I’m sure that is the question everyone will be asking after the Day of Retribution is over. They will all be asking why, indeed, why? That is the question I’ve had for everyone throughout all my years of suffering. Why was I condemned to live a life of misery and worthlessness while other men were able to experience the pleasures of sex and love with women? Why do all things have to be this way? I ask all of you.”

For those of you still wondering why Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger decided to hop in his BMW and start popping caps in assorted white girl asses -- this, after already stabbing three men to death -- “My Twisted World” is pretty much his dual-use raison d’etre/mea culpa. Alike Anders Breivik’s 77-corpse marketing campaign for “2038: A European Declaration of Independence,” I think its pretty safe to assume the whole reason the world’s most famous incensed virgin embarked upon his killing spree was just to build publicity for this flimsy tirade, which serves as something of a combination autobiography and blueprint for global female enslavement. Granted, it’s a challenging literary thematic -- acting as both heartwarming coming-of-age treatise and genocidal strategy guide -- but then again, it’s not like he can pen anything worse than “Atlas Shrugged” here. Oh, and by examining his batshit ramblings, there may indeed be an opportunity to understand how he went from snobby dickhead to snobby dickhead mass killer, which in turn, would allot society a greater knowledge of how to prevent similar mayhem from happening in the future. And like I said before, this shit has to be better than anything Ayn Rand’s fingers threw up, so there’s an automatic positive for us right there.

Rodger begins his manifesto by discussing his early childhood. He was born July 24, 1991 in London, where he lived until the age of 5. His dad, Peter, was a photographer/wannabe filmmaker who came from an old money family; his father, George, was a famed British photog, who is probably best known for taking pictures of concentration camp bodies and nude Zulu warriors. Mama Rodger was a Chinese film set nurse who was born in Malaysia. There’s a pretty good chance, Elliot tells us, that she got boned by George Lucas, too.

So, Elliot goes to a private school and watches “The Land Before Time” with his grandmother. By the time he is four, he has already visited six different countries. His sister Georgia is born when he’s about five, so the family decides to relocate to California. Elliot fondly recalls playing with girls in elementary school (apparently, the last time any females paid him any attention), and cites being kicked off the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios for being too short as the first of many, many injustices he would encounter in his lifetime.

For Christmas, he receives his first home video game console, a Nintendo 64.

“Of course, while playing these video games, my innocent happy self knew nothing of the significant role video games would play during a large portion of my life,” he writes. “And the sanctuary such games would provide for me from the cruelties of this world.”

So, his parents split up and Daddy Rodger monkeys around in Morocco for awhile and gets remarried. Meanwhile, Elliot remains in California with his mother, playing Pokemon with his friends and attending the red carpet premiere of the first “Star Wars” prequel.”

He talks about the joy of finding a Charizard trading card, people making fun of him for being short, and trying to get into the skateboarding subculture. “This was the start,” he said, “of an obsession to copy everything the supposed ‘cool kids’ were doing.” He starts collecting Beanie babies as a secret hobby, while spending his afternoons playing “Banjo and Kazooie” and “Golden Eye.”

He receives a PS2 for Christmas claims to get awesome at hacky sack, and begins submerging himself into the Internet as a substitute for actual human bonds. “Joining chatrooms through AOL temporarily filled in the social void for a few weeks,” he writes “This will definitely not be the first time I would try to fill in that void with the Internet.”

Then he gets an Xbox, and starts playing “Diablo 2” a lot. Then, he begins visiting an online game café called Planet Cyber, where he’s exposed to porn for the first time.

“Finding out about sex,” Rodger states, “was just the beginning of my horrific downfall.”

He rambles on for a few pages about “Halo 2,” and then he talks about his obsession with “World of Warcraft.”

“I was so immersed in the game that I no longer cared what people thought about me," he wrote. “I only saw school as something that took time away from WoW.”

So, his step mama gives birth, and he tells us that even though he’s a teenager, he’s still kinda’ afraid of the dark. He gets backstage passes to see the third “Star Wars” prequel early, but since he’s in the eighth grade now, he lets us know that nobody gives a shit about that nerdy stuff anymore.

“Avatar: the Last Air Bender” becomes his favorite TV show, and he recounts his masturbatory habits. Ever shameful of beating off to standard pornography, he said he used regular websites as spanking fodder instead.

While Daddy Rodger is out making the documentary “Oh My God,” his son remains in self-imposed isolation. “My only social interaction was with my online friends,” Elliot painfully recollects.

WoW expansion packs get released, and he talks at length about how cool it was to have a teacher in high school that was into video games. How nice, Elliot said, it felt to actually have a real human being to talk to about stuff.

At this point, Elliot’s jealousy of “cool kids” starts boiling over. He recalls watching “Alpha Dog,” and cheering when the main character died. He got to hang out with people, and go to parties, and make out with chicks, Rodger writes: his death was well deserved.

Then, Rodger starts formulating these grandiose “Logan’s Run”-like plans to abolish sex as a human activity. So invested in his out-there, totalitarian fantasies that he tells us that he temporarily quits playing WoW to focus on his despotic, sci-fi visions.

He writes about using Facebook “stalking accounts” to spy on classmates, and brushes up on artificial insemination technologies at Barnes and Noble. His parents, finally beginning to suspect something ain’t right with this boy, make him see a “life coach,” but unsurprisingly, it has little impact on reshaping Rodger’s general outlook. He gets back on the Warcraft, and drives around late at night, listening to “Two is Better than One” over and over again. Huh…and you thought Seung Hui Cho had shitty taste in music!

Rodger tells us he gets into the work of George R.R. Martin, and decides to move to Santa Barbara -- primarily, because that’s the setting of “Alpha Dog,” and he presumably thought if he moved there, he, too, would find himself fully absorbed into the same sex-soaked social life that a fictitious movie character was. Yeah, I know the movie was technically based on a true story, but still.

He reads “The Secret” and some other "Law of Attraction” shit, and starts taking Karate classes. None of them appear to have done him any good. Instead, he sinks deep into the fantasy world of “Game of Thrones.”

“Each week I looked forward to the next episode,” he writes, “and each episode gave me a small hint of joy in my otherwise bleak life.”

So, he starts attending classes at Santa Barbara City College, and let us know that he really, REALLY doesn’t like his Hispanic suitemates. He attends the premiere of the first “Hunger Games” movie (for which his daddy was an assistant director) and a private Katy Perry concert, and tells us how much he hates the fact that kids richer than he was were in attendance. After reading “Power of Your Subconscious Mind,” he does what any level-headed person would do: he starts buying lottery tickets en masse, believing that the power of positive thought would lead to him hitting the jackpot, and thusly, make everybody like him.

During a pity party, he gets drunk and spills win on his laptop. Afterwards, he makes his mama buy him a new one. His parents make him go see a psychiatrist, and that’s when he first starts thinking about his fateful “Day of Retribution.”

He begins purchasing handguns, and spends virtually all of his free-time holed up, by himself, in his bedroom. With only his mass hatred of all of humanity to keep him company, he then begins thinking up shit like this:

“I concluded that woman are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves…when I came to this brilliant, perfect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way, I am one of the few people on this world who had the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Then, he starts visiting the recently shamed-out-of-existence website PUAHATE.COM, which is dedicated to disgruntled patrons of alleged “pick up artists.” With nothing left to live for, he said his original plan was to strike on Halloween 2013, but there were too many Po-Po out and about. He ends up seeing more counselors, and makes one last ditch effort to get laid before turning 22, but he winds up getting his ass kicked in a street fight instead. He spends Halloween getting drunk in his mama’s hot tub, all by his lonesome. Funny how no one seems to be pinning the blame on alcoholism as a potential catalyst for the murders, no?

He recounts the sorrow he felt watching a couple make out on a golf course, which more than anything else in the manifesto, comes closest to giving us a “breaking point” moment.

“There were lots of other people there as well, for it was quite a unique sunset. All of them must have had thoughts of admiration towards the couple, and thoughts of contempt towards me because I was all alone and unwanted. I have lived such an unnatural life, devoid of love, sex and pleasure. Watching sunsets was one of the few joys I had left, and now that too was taken from me. How can I enjoy a sunset anymore, knowing that other men get to enjoy them with their beautiful girlfriends at their side? There was no more life for me to live.”

He targets Valentine’s Day 2014 as the original date of attack, but then bumps it up to April 26. What did his grandiose plan consist of, you may be wondering? Well, here’s what his ideal mass murder endeavor would’ve resembled:

“On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance. Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking people had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring the pain to people who actually deserve it. I will cut them, flay them, strip all the skin off their flesh and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of. When they are dead, I will behead them and keep their heads in a bag, for their heads will play a major role in the final phase.”

All right, so round one of the Elliot Rodger murder parade would basically be the first “Hellraiser” movie. That’s all fine and dandy, but what non-Cenobite-themed mass mayhem would he have liked to hoist upon the masses?

“The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender. The hottest sorority of UCSB. After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their house is, and I’ve set outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot beautiful blonde girls, the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have because they all looked down on me…I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 a.m. on the Day of Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set the whole house on fire. Then we shall see who the superior one really is!”

After that, he said he would’ve killed his entire step-family, and gone “Death Race 2000” on the streets of Isla Vista, trying to splatter as many pedestrians as he could en route to his final act:

“Once I reach Del Playa Street, I will dump the bag of severed heads I had saved from my previous victims, proclaiming to everyone how much I’ve made them all suffer. Once they see all of their friend’s heads roll onto the street, everyone will fear me as the powerful god I am. I will then start massacring everyone on Del Playa Street. I will pull up next to a house party and fire bullets at everyone partying on the front yard. I will specifically target the good looking people, and all the couples. After I have destroyed a house party, I will continue down Del Playa, destroying everything and everyone. When I see the first police car come to their rescue, I will drive away as fast as I can, shooting and ramming anyone in my path…to end my own life, I will quickly swallow all of the Xanax and Vicodin pills I have left, along with an ample amount of hard liquor. Immediately after imbibing the mixture, I will shoot myself in the head with two of my handguns simultaneously. If the gunshots don’t kill me, the deadly drug mixture eventually will. I will not suffer being captured and sent to prison.”

Prior to the attack, he uploads several YouTube videos, stating if just ONE girl would have contacted him, he probably would’ve cancelled the massacre. Alas, no one did (surprisingly, going on cryptic, eugenicist rants isn’t the best way to win over the fairer sex) and due to a head cold, he postpones his attack until May 24. Apparently, somebody WAS concerned by his videos, since the Po-Po showed up at his doorstep one day. Alas, they didn’t search his room, which Rodger said would’ve “ruined everything.” So, uh, who do we want to blame more for the massacre with that info in mind: the callous women of Santa Barbara who wouldn’t even give a horribly depressed young man one evening of social discourse, or the lackadaisical law enforcement, who with just a bit of authoritative, intrusive force, could’ve foiled all of Rodger’s plans right then and there?

He concludes the book with a passage about his highfalutin scheme to totally eradicate the female population. He wants to round up all of the Earth women into concentration camps, where a few well be kept in underground sex bunkers, you know, just to keep the species going. It’s a simple hypothesis, really: if there’s no women, there’s no sex, right? Uh…not according to at least one movie I can think of, anyway…

And of course, that brings us to the tirade’s literal final word:

“All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war. I wasn’t the one who struck first. But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.”

Boy oh boy, did Elliot ever show us what-for, no? After gunning and stabbing six people to death (interestingly enough, killing more men than he executed women folk), his manifesto spread like wildfire over the Interwebs, with cyber-feminists the world over slamming it for promoting misogynistic violence. Instead of capturing our hearts, Rodger’s lengthy diatribe did little more than momentarily rankle the very people it was intended to influence. Instead of dying a hero of the men’s rights movement, he just wound up being remembered as a rich, delusional pansy who killed a whole bunch of innocent people because he couldn’t get laid. That in mind, I cant imagine a more inglorious epitaph than the one Elly-boy penned for himself, really.

I suppose you can gleam some truths from the tirade, though. For one, it really demonstrates the HATE + ISOLATION + HOPELESSNESS = MASS DEATH hypothesis quite well, with Rodger blaming his own romantic failures on the totality of society, and then falling into Internet seclusion instead of engaging in any sort of pro-social bonds with anyone. Feeling that he would never be accepted, he fell in love with his grandiose murder fantasies instead, ultimately reaching a point of such depression that he decided the only satiation he could ever get out of existence was to take himself out of it altogether, with a couple of collateral bodies thrown in for good measure.

1 comment:

I enjoyed reading your blog post but how could you skimp over the part where he saw a couple of "popular kids" of both sexes hang out with each other in the park and because of that sight decided to drive off to a toy store to buy a super soaker, fill it with orange juice and drive back to shoot the orange juice "all over them". His dilusional mind was fascinating to read as hell, the fact it was all real made it so extraordinary. So much hatred, so much spilled starbucks coffee. Best non fiction book I've ever read.

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